We’ve always considered ourselves fans of Anderson’s work (even his commercials) and have greatly enjoyed repeat viewings of this movie in spite of its shockingly dark turn. Where it falls in the cinema canon of “great works” we’ll leave up to Patinkin and Kazurinsky to decide.

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I was curious and surprised to find a new citrus in my local produce store: sweet lime. Another variation on the citrus theme, sweet lime is a juicy, sweet rather than acidic fruit reminiscent in flavor of grapefruit and mandarin oranges.

In the film Darjeeling Limited, sweet lime was served as a refresher to passengers settling into their cars. I did some checking around (i.e. Wikipedia) and learned that India is one of the largest producers of sweet lime in the world, where it’s both consumed for fun and medicinal purposes.

I’ve never personally had any sweet lime juice there, but a survey of websites suggest that it’s mixed with some honey or sugar similar to lemonade for serving. If anyone has had this drink in India, where it’s called mousabi (musabi / mosabi), please comment and let it be known how it’s typically prepared.

Turning Sweet Lime into a Cocktail
Never one to stand on tradition when it comes to mixology, I juiced a few sweet limes and tried them in traditional citrus cocktails. If you come a across some sweet limes, try substituting some or all of the lemon or lime juice in your favorite recipe with sweet lime. You’ll need about one third of the total sugar than when using lemons, and it delivers an interesting, subtle twist.

I’m a gin person, so I tried came up with this recipe. Try it for yourself and see what you think!

The Sweet Lime Limited2 ounces of gin
3 ounces sweet lime juice
2 Basil Leaves
1 ounce simple syrup (a.k.a. sugar water, a tablespoon of sugar or more to taste dissolved in a little warm water will do if you don’t have simple syrup handy)
Pinch of salt
Splash of Soda Water

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From his speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” given one year, to the day, before his death:

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [Applause]

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [Sustained applause]

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. (source)

Check out Democracy Now! for great coverage of this anniversary and the legacy of Dr. King.

So I’m late. In more than one way, actually. First and foremost, if you’ve been checking my movie log (and I know you have), then you will notice that I just recently saw The Darjeeling Limited. Forgive me, I know I have sinned, but it was earnest- I was at school, away from limited release theaters, when it came out and by the time I returned for Christmas it was out of theaters. When the DVD came out, they were all gone in the Blockbuster in San Diego, so I finally saw it while at home for spring break. Anyways- amazing movie. Every time Wes Anderson makes a film, it becomes impossible to rank it among the others. This film was absolutely amazing, but was it better than Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums? It’s hard to say, really, they are all just so great. His visual style as well as his use of deadpan humor, minimalist dialog and a number of common themes tie his films together, and sitting next to each other on a shelf, they certainly feel related. I will not go on and on about the movies, as Rushmore Academy (The net’s biggest and best Anderson fan site) has done that well enough. I will say though, that each of his movies has certainly impacted me personally, and the way I look at family, friendship and the human condition. The idiosyncrasies of his characters and the perfection and detail of his sets, wardrobes, and soundtracks certainly convey his own little beautiful world, utterly separate from our own, but it would be hard to call his work fantasy. In the case of his most recent work, I felt so connected to all three of the Whitman brothers, in different ways. I certainly feel that my obsessive compulsive nature can be similar to Francis, but I definitely feel that my attachment to women is conveyed in Jack. Strangely enough, as hard as it is to say (as always with Anderson), my favorite of the three is probably Adrien Brody as Peter. I am in total anticipation for 2009’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox (I loved Roald Dahl as a child.) It is a shame that this film, along with his previous four, didn’t win the oscar.